Mad Men and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows star Jared Harris has just been cast in Gil Kenan‘s upcoming remake of Poltergeist. That piece of information has two deeper layers of meaning. First, it’s a good week to be Jared Harris. The actor was also just cast in Guy Ritchie’s The Man of U.N.C.L.E. Second, Harris is playing the host of a fictional TV show called Haunted House Cleaners, which shows a pretty major deviation from Tobe Hooper’s original film.

Nicholas Braun, who appeared in Red State, is also in talks to join the film along with co-star of The Following, Kyle Catlett. Rosemarie DeWitt and Sam Rockwell will star.

French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has made an American film (Alien: Resurrection) but he hasn’t made one that actually takes place in the States. So The Young and Prodigious Spivet, a strange travelogue starring an unusual young boy, will be a first for the director. (It’s also his first 3D movie.)

Based on the book The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen, the film follows “a 12-year-old cartography enthusiast in an eccentric family, who travels across country hidden on board a freight train after being invited to the Smithsonian Institute.”

Helena Bonham Carter, Kathy Bates, Judy Davis, Callum Keith Rennie, and Jeunet’s perpetual casting choice Dominique Pinon all appear, and newcomer Kyle Catlett plays the title role. After seeing this first trailer I could see people making links to the Coen Brothers, or the work of Wes Anderson, even Tim Burton. But this also looks to be recognizably Jeunet, and that’s pretty appealing. Read More »